IV.

Language and Literature

The languages of the Inuit peoples constitute a subfamily of the Inuit-Aleut (Eskimaleut) language family. A major linguistic division occurs in Alaska, according to whether the speakers call themselves Inuit (singular, Inuk) or Yuit (singular, Yuk). The eastern branch of the subfamily—generally called Inupiaq in Alaska but also Inuktitut in Canada and Kalaallisut (Kalâdtlisut) in Greenland—stretches from eastern Alaska across Canada and through northern into southern Greenland. It forms a dialect chain—that is, it consists of many dialects, each understandable to speakers of neighboring dialects, although not to speakers of geographically distant dialects. The western branch, called Yupik, includes three distinct languages: Central Alaskan Yupik and Pacific Gulf Yupik in Alaska and Siberian Yupik in Alaska and Canada, each with several dialects (see Native American Languages). The Inupiaq dialects have more than 40,000 speakers in Greenland and more than 20,000 in Alaska and Canada. Yupik languages are spoken by about 17,000 people, including some 1,000 in the former Soviet Union. These various languages are used for the first year of school in some parts of Siberia, for religious instruction and education in schools under Inuit control in Alaska, and in schools and communications media in Canada and Greenland.

The Inupiaq and Yupik languages have an immense number of suffixes that are added to a smaller number of root words; these suffixes function similarly to verb endings, case endings, prepositional phrases, and even whole clauses in the English language. A root word can thus give rise to many derivative words, often many syllables long and highly specialized in meaning, and sometimes complex enough to serve as an entire sentence.

Because these languages are among the most complex and difficult in the world, few explorers or traders learned them; instead, they relied on a jargon composed of Danish, Spanish, Hawaiian, and Inupiaq and Yupik words. The Inupiaq and Yupik languages themselves have a rich oral literature, and a number of Greenland authors have written in Greenland Inupiaq. The first book in Inupiaq was published in 1742.